


It's Not About That

by chronicAngel



Series: Leaves in the Summer [26]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Angst, Anorexia, Eating Disorders, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, POV Third Person, Vomiting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-18
Updated: 2018-06-18
Packaged: 2019-05-08 13:24:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14695089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chronicAngel/pseuds/chronicAngel
Summary: "When was the last time you ate?""...Last week. With you and Chōji after training.""Did you keep it down?"She blinks through tears, a familiar tingling sensation filling her nose. She's never felt so broken before. "No. I threw everything up when I got home."





	It's Not About That

**Author's Note:**

> **If you are triggered by eating disorders, specifically anorexia, or by vomiting (not binge/purge) then I highly recommend you do not read this fic.**

The first time she skips a meal, she's nine.

She and Sakura ended their friendship a month ago, and all of the other girls in their classes followed their example shortly after, every female-female friendship torn apart by Uchiha Sasuke, who has yet to have looked at any of them. They only align together when they're singling one girl out and making her feel bad about themselves, and she feels simultaneously best and worst about it when it's Sakura. On this particular day, though, it's her. Sakura stands just behind the brown-haired girl who stands in front of them all, hands on her hips and face decorated with a mocking sneer.

Ino has always been more confident than Sakura is, but a collection of comments on her weight from the girl in the front that all of the girls behind her giggle over makes her second-guess everything, staring down at her waist before stomping away and into her next class. She keeps her chin high for the rest of the day and breaks down sobbing the minute she gets home, so much so that she forgets to eat dinner.

This is the sort of thing she would have talked to Shikamaru about when they were younger.

She hasn't talked to Shikamaru in a month.

By the time she turns thirteen, she's used to skipping meals for days at a time, the ache in her stomach like an old friend who constantly says mean things about you, but you keep her around anyway because it's familiar.

"Hey Ino," Chōji greets through a mouthful of potato chips, and though the way he eats makes her stomach twist, she's sure her mouth is a second from watering at the thought of eating something. As though reading her mind, he holds the bag out in offering, and she immediately pulls her eyes down toward her waist and scoffs something about how disgusting those things are, swallowing her quickly building up saliva.

Shikamaru doesn't bother to greet her, just continues standing there with his hands stuffed in his pockets and his eyes pointed infuriatingly at her stomach. He looks lost in thought, but she doesn't feel like asking about it; perhaps she's more broken than she feels, or perhaps she's just selfish. She isn't sure. "Asuma-sensei will already be waiting for us at the training grounds," she announces impatiently instead, and Shikamaru lifts his eyes to roll them. The three of them start walking together, Chōji chatting so happily that he doesn't notice neither of them are talking back.

"So Akamaru threw up all over Kiba's food and he was gonna throw it away. I'm like, 'Dude, that's a waste,'" he says merrily, and she might have commented on how disgusting that was if she'd eaten in the last three days. As it is, she can barely focus as she smells food from every stall they pass on their way to the training grounds, half-hungry, half-nauseous. "And Kiba cracked some joke about how I wasn't _gutsy_ enough to do it, so I ate the whole thing."

"I can't believe you're still friends with that loser," she finally scoffs as they reach the gates of the training grounds, and Shikamaru rushes to greet Asuma-sensei before it turns into an argument. She thinks any other teacher would drop his cigarette on the grassy ground, stomp it out, and pretend to be a good influence for three seconds. He takes another drag as he lifts his other hand from his pocket to wave at them.

They train until the sun begins to set.

Normally, they only train for an hour or two until they split up, Ino trying to find an excuse not to go to lunch with the boys and then rushing to her house where she can hide in her room and take a nap before the urge to cook something for herself hits. Today, they meet at noon and don't split up until the sky starts turning orange, and Asuma-sensei and Chōji insist that, since they've kept her all day so they know she hasn't had lunch, they have to feed her something before she goes home and passes out after such a long spar with Shikamaru. He, strangely, says nothing.

"I don't want to sit around and listen to Chō's gross dog barf lunch stories," she says, wrinkling her nose, and the Akimichi holds his hands up defensively. Asuma shoots him a look like he wants to ask, but turns to instead focus on his female student.

"Ino, I've heard a lot about how girls your age are very self-conscious and don't like to eat in front of boys or are always watching their figures, but you _don't_ need to diet." He sounds so placating it almost makes her sick.

She agrees to go to lunch just so they won't suspect anything, but yells that they're _not_ going to the Yakiniku Q _again_.

They end up at Ichiraku Ramen, and she eats her entire bowl in three minutes just so she doesn't stretch the burning pain in her stomach from eating any longer than that. Chōji ends up eating four (which isn't as much as usual) and somehow tricks Asuma-sensei into paying for it the same way he always does. She really doesn't know how he can afford to date Kurenai when he's blowing all his money on feeding Chōji. Shikamaru spends an hour picking at one bowl until she announces that she should really head home, noticing out of the corner of her eye that the lanterns that line these parts of the streets are beginning to turn on and deciding she's stuck around for a polite enough amount of time. He offers to walk her home, but the way he says it, she knows it's not really an offer so much as a notification, so she nods.

She doesn't feel like talking, but knows that he wouldn't tell her he was walking her home if there wasn't something on his mind. Still, it takes him a few minutes to say anything at all, and he just stares at her silently with his hands shoved in his pockets.

When he finally does speak up, she wishes he hadn't. "You're skinny," he says, giving her a sidelong look, and she thinks she understands why he's been staring at her all day. "You're always skinny," he cuts her off before she can say anything out of offense, and she chews on her lip because that's the only way she knows how to respond. "But you're skinnier."

"Thank you?" She says immediately, raising an eyebrow, but he seems to realize that it's a rhetorical question. It's her gentle way of saying _I don't want to talk about this_. His following silence is his version of an _Okay_. In the years they've grown up together, they've developed their own secret language, but Shikamaru is selectively deaf and she's frequently the subject of his ignorance.

They don't speak until they get to her house, standing in front of the door where they made up two years ago after the second biggest fight she's ever had. He stops her in front of it, his expression still concerned. She nods in a silent confirmation that he can talk about this now, even though she still doesn't want to.

"I was thinking about it at Ichiraku," he says, and she stops a huff. "I haven't seen you eat in front of me since we were eight."

"What a crazy coincidence," she says halfheartedly, but it just comes out flat and like she's not even trying to convince him. A part of her wonders if maybe she's not. After all, she isn't sure what she's trying to convince him yet.

He gives her a look she's seen many times throughout their lives, the same furrowed-eyebrows-and-mouth-pressed-into-a-thin-line look he's been giving her since they were learning to walk.

She gives him the same pleading look she mastered when they were eleven.

They stare at each other like that for a minute, and another set of childhood friends might have an entire conversation in the eye contact but for them, it's just silence. He knows her better than anyone but neither of them are telepathic. She sniffs and barely holds back tears, and he immediately clutches her arm and drags her into a hug, his arms wrapped too high on her waist to be normal and she half-thinks he's checking for ribs. She doesn't say anything, though, because she knows that she needs this. She doesn't fit so perfectly in anyone's arms like Shikamaru's.

"Take care of yourself, Ino, okay?" He says, and now he's the one pleading and she feels her heart stutter as she almost sobs. She clutches him tighter for a minute and then pulls away because her stomach is starting to twist and her father will be wondering where she is soon. As a shinobi, she gets a bit of a pass for staying out late, but as his thirteen-year-old daughter, she doesn't get that much of one.

She nods and sniffs and then turns, though, and she clutches the door handle until she hears his footsteps turning around and then shuffling away. She takes a deep breath before going inside, and her father is sitting on the couch, apparently waiting for her. "Hey, honey!" He grins at her, setting his scroll to the side.

"Hey, Dad," she says, smiling weakly at him, but if he sees through it he respects her boundaries enough not to bring it up. Either that or he's too much of a coward to try having an emotional conversation with his daughter for once. "Asuma-sensei took the guys and I out for dinner after training, so I think I'm just gonna go to bed, if that's okay." He looks startled for a moment, and then just nods and smiles at her. She thinks that they're both faking it.

Her stomach twists before she even makes it to her bedroom, and she keels over, retching in the hallway halfway to her room before she can get out of hearing distance. She can feel it burning in her nose, and her legs are so shaky underneath her that she drops to her hands and knees. She tries to inhale too early and ends up coughing and choking on her own sick. She becomes vaguely aware after a minute of her father crouching next to her, rubbing her back. "Ino, what's the matter?"

"I-I guess I must have eaten something bad," she offers after a minute, elbows shaking as she holds herself above the puddle of half-digested noodles. He nods, expression sympathetic, and scoops her up, carrying her the rest of the way to her room like a little kid. She can't even muster up the energy to feel indignant about it, pressing her face into his shoulder and falling half-asleep by the time he deposits her in her bed. When he's gone, as though he could somehow read her thoughts, she privately reminds herself that she wouldn't have had anything to throw up if she just hadn't eaten before she passes out.

She avoids her teammates for days after that.

It is not necessarily abnormal for her to skip training every once in a while, but it only takes four days for Shikamaru to come knocking at her door.

The first time, she isn't home. She's running the flower shop by herself, something that's been far from uncommon in the last few months, and is surprised when she gets home to find her father has already gotten home from his latest mission (it's something about Otogakure that he can't tell her about, but if she's being honest, she's not sure she wants to know about it anyway). He puts down whatever piece of paper he's looking at when the doors slide shut behind her, smiles, and tells her Shikamaru stopped by.

The second time, she answers and immediately regrets it. She makes an excuse about being sick and apologizes with a smile they both know is fake, and then closes the door before he can protest it.

After that, she stops answering the door. She either pointedly ignores the knocks until they stop, or runs to her room when her father gets up to answer it (this happens less and less as time goes on, largely because he is away on missions more and more frequently) and doesn't come back until he comes to her room and gently questions her about why she's avoiding her friend. She just laughs it off and explains that it's _Dumb girl stuff_ , and he lets her get away with it.

When she is finally forced to confront him, it is because he has just let himself in. Her father is on a mission and so she is too startled to think better of it when there is a knock directly on her bedroom door, gripping a kunai in one hand and convincing herself that she is trembling because she actually does not know who it is and not because she has not eaten in days. Of course, she does know who it is. When she opens the door and sees it is Shikamaru, she does not release a breath she didn't know she was holding because she was not holding her breath. Still, she lets the kunai in her hand clatter to the ground and tells herself it is out of relief even as she does not stop shaking. "Why can't you just leave me alone, you stalker?" She says, leveling him with a glare.

He does not seem affected by her words at all, looking over her and then letting himself into her room. It is immaculate except for the single kunai she was just holding that litters the floor, with all of her laundry folded and put away in her dresser, her drawers neatly organized. Her bed is made, her blankets slightly wrinkled from where she was sitting on them a moment ago but otherwise looking as though she has not touched them in days. She hopes he doesn't notice the hairline cracks at the edges of her vanity mirror from where she has lost her temper with her own body, or the way she doesn't have a single picture of herself in the room.

When his eyes settle on her again, she is trying not to cry even though neither of them has said anything. "When was the last time you ate?"  
  
"...Last week. With you and Chōji after training."  
  
"Did you keep it down?"  
  
She blinks through tears, a familiar tingling sensation filling her nose. She's never felt so broken before. "No. I threw everything up when I got home." There's something about his expression that seems almost disappointed, and she stares down at her feet so he won't see the wet streaks that trail pathetically down her cheeks. _I should be stronger than this_ , she thinks, sniffing.

To her surprise, he grabs her wrist and pulls her in against his chest despite the way she stiffens. "God, Ino..." He whispers into her hair, and she thinks it is shame that stirs in her gut. _He sounds so upset_. "You're thin, Ino. Why do you do this to yourself?"

"It's not about that," she says immediately, and she wonders how that can be true. This whole time she's been telling herself it's because she's not skinny enough, but like instinct, she has just told him what should then be a lie. "I'm not... I know I'm _thin_ ," she eventually tries to explain, though she spits it like it is something disgusting. "But it's not enough. I'm... _I'm_ not enough."

"Ino," he says, pulling away from her enough to look her in the eyes and resting his hands on her cheeks. Something about his face is always so warm, but there's something about the look in his eyes now that shoots ice through her veins. He looks... _terrified_. He looks like he expects her to die in his arms right now, and she supposes, bitterly, that if he had waited much longer she very well could have. She knows that she's killing herself like this. She knows that she's wasting away. Somehow, though, this has never mattered to her before. Somehow, she has never considered the real consequences of this. Has never thought this choice could possibly affect anyone else. "Ino." He says again, seemingly realizing that she's getting lost in her own head again. She stares him in the eyes, and wonders if she wears so much fear, too. "You're beautiful."


End file.
